Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
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Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
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Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#2Years ago, I was convinced that saffron's "taste" was more mental than anything else, so I ran a little matched pairs experiment to see if anyone could taste the difference between a rice dish with saffron or one without. No one could.
Admittedly, it was too small of an experiment to be sure, but it just seems like a very expensive food dye to me.
I'll just stick to turmeric.
Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#3Saffron's expensive by weight; but not per recipe. A teaspoon of the stuff could float away on the breeze, but few recipes call for as much as a teaspoon. A £5.00 box of saffron lasts me about 3 months, and I use the stuff weekly.
Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#4Years ago, I was convinced that saffron's "taste" was more mental than anything else, so I ran a little matched pairs experiment to see if anyone could taste the difference between a rice dish with saffron or one without. No one could. Admittedly, it was too small of an experiment to be sure, but it just seems like a very expensive food dye to me. I'll just stick to turmeric.
I believe you diluted it too much
Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#5Years ago, I was convinced that saffron's "taste" was more mental than anything else, so I ran a little matched pairs experiment to see if anyone could taste the difference between a rice dish with saffron or one without. No one could. Admittedly, it was too small of an experiment to be sure, but it just seems like a very expensive food dye to me. I'll just stick to turmeric.
I believe you diluted it too much
Easy to burn the flavor off
Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#6Had anyone tried to grow their own saffron? How did it go?
Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#7I love saffron! Not because of its taste (which I kind-of hate) or other properties (like staining, which I definitely hate, or security-theatre-triggering, but more about that below), but mostly due to the rituals around it, and because a friend of mine once got booted off a TV cooking show as a result of using it.
So, visiting the famous (and horrible, but thank you!) Spice Market in Istanbul recently, I just could not resist learning everything I could about saffron (mostly: how to spot the fake stuff -- spoiler: the paint sinks in hot water), plus, of course, taking home some of the real stuff for said friend.
This, on an unplanned detour through Germany on my way back, got me into a bit of trouble. Apparently, the post-9/11 scanners that determine whether your hand-luggage contains anything troublesome, have some of their own issues with saffron...
Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#8Had anyone tried to grow their own saffron? How did it go?
No, but I had thought about planting safflower which is supposed to be a budget alternative. Never went through with it.
Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#9I love saffron! Not because of its taste (which I kind-of hate) or other properties (like staining, which I definitely hate, or security-theatre-triggering, but more about that below), but mostly due to the rituals around it, and because a friend of mine once got booted off a TV cooking show as a result of using it. So, visiting the famous (and horrible, but thank you!) Spice Market in Istanbul recently, I just could…
Why did they get booted for using it?
Re: Saffron: The Most Expensive Spice
#10A couple of years ago I trained some ResNets to detect saffron flowers and their stigmas and then simulated the picking process in Blender. One would have to develop a suitable soft gripper and use a precise pick-and-place robotic arm (delta robots are great for this), but IMHO the amount of manual labour during harvest can be solved with today's technology.